The Strongest Whisper by Ezra Barany

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His junior year was quite prolific, and with the assistance of Eric Mittler he recorded his first album, "Alley Blues." Ezra continued to write songs in his junior year but didn't record his second album, "Silent Lover," until his senior year. He spent the summers of 1985 and 1986 at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music refining his music transcription abilities.

After high school, Ezra went to California State University Northridge to study classical composition in September 1987. But it wasn't until after he finished his Bachelor of Arts degree in music that he received what he calls his true "musical education."

The power of music was finally laid out clearly for Ezra when he attended the Dick Gove School of Music from 1993 to 1994. Here was where he learned how to write many different styles of music, such as big band, funk, pop, latin, broadway, dixie, as well as others. The Dick Grove School of Music was made up of teachers whose profession was writing music for TV and film, including Jack Smalley ("Charlie's Angels," "Last of the Mohicans," "Murder She Wrote," "Twilight Zone") and Thom Sharp ("Darkwing Duck," "King of the Hill;" orchestration for "When Harry Met Sally," "City Slickers"). Sadly, the school had to declare bankruptcy in 1993. So, Ezra finished the Composing and Arranging Program with Dick Grove himself (Bill Cosby Specials, "The Dean Martin Show," "Hooray for Hollywood," "The Jack Benny Special," "The Diana Ross Special," "Carol Burnette Special," the Grammy Awards Shows, the Golden Globes Shows, "The Milton Berle Show").

In December 1994, Ezra wrote an orchestrated jazz waltz, "Rondo on the Road," which was performed at the College Preparatory School in Oakland, California. From 1995 to 1996, he lived in Israel with his sister while learning Hebrew. Ezra then returned to Oakland where he took up odd jobs through a temp agency, and during the evenings sang with the Sacred and Profane Chorus. The Sacred and Profane, conducted by Susan Swerdlow, Ezra's high school music teacher, performed his arrangement of Maoz Tzur, a traditional Hebrew melody.

In 1997, Ezra was sobered by the fact that he wasn't doing as much music as he had hoped, and feeling extreme emotional anguish, he contemplated suicide. After a single session with a psychiatrist, he realized that he didn't want to end his life, but just wanted to end the way he lived his life. The next day he applied to the Peace Corps. By 1998, he was volunteering as an English tutor, in preparation for the Peace Corps. Ezra also joined a creative writing group, since writing had always been another of his passions.

At the writing group, he met Beth Dora Reisberg and began dating her a few months later. In March, 1999, while on a vacation in France, Ezra proposed to Beth in the gardens of the Chantilly Chateau. They married on August 20th, 2000 on a boat in the San Francisco Bay, and again on August 27th in front of all their friends and family.

In July 2001, Dafkah Records produced Ezra's first fully orchestrated album, "The Strongest Whisper." Ezra and Beth spent 2 years in Paris, France, where Ezra taught Songwriting. They now live in Oakland, California.

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